Richard Fortey—one of the world’s most gifted natural scientists and acclaimed author of Life, Trilobite and Earth—describes this splendid new book as a museum of the mind. But it is, as well, a perfect behind-the-scenes guide to a legendary place. Within its pages, London’s Natural History Museum, a home of treasures—plants from the voyage of Captain Cook, barnacles to which Charles Darwin devoted years of study, hidden accursed jewels—pulses with life and miraculous surprises. In an elegant and illuminating narrative, Fortey acquaints the reader with the extraordinary people, meticulous research and driving passions that helped to create the timeless experiences of wonder that fill the museum. And with the museum’s hallways and collection rooms providing a dazzling framework, Fortey offers an often eye-opening social history of the scientific accomplishments of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Fortey’s scholarship dances with wit. Here is a book that is utterly entertaining from its first page to its last.

“Fortey. . . in his affectionate portrayal of the institution in which he spent his working life. . . sneaks us behind the scenes with all the glee of a small child seeing for the first time the museum's iconic Diplodocus skeleton . . .always authoritative. . . the beauty of the book is that - just like a museum - you can visit the different sections in any order you choose, lingering in the places that most take your fancy. . . and there is plenty of solid science to enjoy, elucidated with brilliant flair.”Sunday Times

“This book is worthy of the place it tells us about, and that is a pretty lofty chunk of praise.”The Times

“Richard Fortey's wonderful book . . . shows the unspectacular elements of the museum collection as the most interesting part of its work, while placing the well-known exhibits in a new and often comical light. . . with eccentricity flourishing unchecked among its staff Fortey has amassed a brilliant collection of anecdotes about their habits.”Daily Telegraph

“In this loving survey of his life at the museum, Fortey. . . is never less than enthused by all the museum's collections.”Financial Times

In an elegant and illuminating narrative, the acclaimed author of "Life, Trilobite!," and "Earth" acquaints the reader with the extraordinary people, meticulous research, and driving passions that helped to create the Natural History Museum in London. Illustrated.

Richard Fortey was a senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. His previous books include the critically acclaimed Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, short-listed for the Rhône-Poulenc Prize in 1998; Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution, short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2001; and The Hidden Landscape: A Journey into the Geological Past, which won the Natural World Book of the Year in 1993. He was Collier Professor in the Public Understanding of Science and Technology at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol in 2002. In 2003, he won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing About Science from Rockefeller University. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1997.